Informative books you recommend

DriveJunky95

I've been using Maya for just a little over a year now and I'd like to broaden my base knowledge of the program, and actually photoshop as well.

What books have you read that you think are really helpful to get a step up? I'm looking for neat tutorials, tips and tricks, that sort of thing. Let me know what you live by!

Lucas Annunziata

Personally I have kept away from physically printed material on game art, programs, etc. I find it way easier to interact with information like that digitally. That being said, 3dmotive has some pretty nifty stuff on maya, same with the gnomon workshop.

This one specifically was really informative: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/955/#.UDFcGt1lTDs

gray

the best thing to do is go through the Maya documentation from beginning to end. that's the best way to see exactly what the software can do. its a bit tedious but if you want to truly know all the dark corners then having a good grasp of the documentation is the definitive understanding.

unfortunately that is just the beginning...

Maya is capable of much much more. to get deeper into any area you need to be specific. you need to ask yourself what is it i want to do? rigging, animation, modeling, rendering, effects, scripting etc. once you have some idea of what you want to learn then you can start to research that area.

there are many good advanced books and dvds on Maya and Photoshop. but they are all very specific to a certain aspects of cg. there is no such thing as a Maya 'expert'. there are people that specialize and push certain areas to achieve a very high quality. dvds and books will be much easier to find once you start looking in specific areas.

Kwramm

I still keep my copy of "Mastering Maya 3" around. Yes, it's a bit dated, but I used it to learn Maya (and I gave away pretty much all other Maya books), and most of the fundamentals of modeling and animation didn't change. I like that it's reference and tutorial in one. Gives a nice overview. There's probably an updated version out by now

For photoshop - I remember Adobe Press's Classroom in a book were quite good.

Ace-Angel

My favorite books are the "Vagina Monologues", it really does broaden your mind...